Bruce is meditating, and I am just listening to music right now. That and drifting in thoughts. I have a lot of school stuff to do. I thought I had a big paper due Saturday, but it's actually due the 11th. I still want to try to do it tomorrow though because I have so much else to do and I am working Saturday. (And Sunday I think I am going kayaking. Unless it's cold. And it has been surprisingly cold lately!)

I've been intensely and uncomfortably emotional lately and I don't know what the root of that is. Is it hormonal? Is it a mid life crisis? Maybe I am gonna die soon and something in me knows? Maybe it's just stress and anxiety over not knowing what career path to try. Frankly just the thought of a career path fills me with anxiety, so that could be it. It's been both pitiful, sort of funny and it makes me want to examine my life and personality very closely. Oh I have been whiny and cry-y. I hope that ends soon.

On the other hand, I talked recently with a friend and she told me something that didn't really hit me with full impact then but it is becoming more and more important to me. I don't want to write the details of it because i know I have a tendency to tell things as I explore my own life that other people might not appreciate me writing about. But the gist of what she told me is making me see that life is short, and death might be final and I just want to be nicer and more caring, more open and direct. But some of those things are hard for me. That idea of being nicer is the one that i am really thinking about right now. I am a pretty nice person but I can be selfish and this incident is impressing on me the importance of not seeing people as roles or symbols or functions but as people who (because i do have that belief in "reasons" have entered my life for some reason. I think about that too. Is that belief laughable? Might be. But while I have amended my idea about many beliefs and practices that particular belief that everything somehow matters has endured. So my goal is to try to be more receptive and listen more carefully to what others say to me and to respond from a better place than I have beem. We shall see if i can do this.

I've had a lot of personal thoughts on my mind lately, and they've really worn me out. One tangent has been Bruce's mom. Her birthday was March 30 and I found myself thinking about her a few days before that and since. Before I went to Florida where I ended up helping her through hospice, a situation I NEVER would have expected to find myself in, I'd only met her in person once. She came out to stay with Bruce and I for awhile the year before she died I think it was (I am bad at timelines) Bruce was nervous and I was terrified. His mom was like a Southern Belle and had a lot of expectations of what I should be like. I don't think I was many of those, if any. She herself was an extremely clean woman and I cannot say housekeeping has ever been my strong suit. Plus, she was fiery, dramatic and given to doing things and causing scenes I couldn't really imagine. I was really pretty scared. When she came I could almost see thoughts, but graciously she didn't express them. Mostly. When we'd go out to eat, which we did fairly often during her visit i learned how particular she really was and I would bring a tall stack of ones, adding to whoever served her a dollar for every infraction of courtesy (my perception). Some of those folks got some whopping tips. But to me she was very kind. She appreciated little things and I came to relax and find a lot I really liked about her. She loved to be catered to so I catered when I could. This was mostly little things, go get her the paper and a doughnut in the mornings, play cards. Bruce and I took her to Mesquite to play Bingo (she LOVED Bingo) I stayed with her and she had about 4 sheets going and was watching mine (I'd never payed bingo before except at home when I was a kid) She would wear her jaunty little cap and bright red lipstick an she had a whole caddy of markers (a gift from Bruce, mostly Elvis themed) We stayed a night in Mesquite and she wanted to stay in our room which made me uncomfortable but ok.... In the middle of the night she sat bolt upright in bed and yelled out, "Good GAWD! Does she always snore like that?" We had our own on subsequent outings. We took her to see Bryce Canyon and stayed at Ruby's Inn, in adjoining rooms. In the middle of the night I heard the faint sound of an alarm clock going off. It was faint but I wondered who would leave the clock going off like that. Eventually it dawned on me that it was coming from Inez' room. I thought no one could sleep through that sound right next to their head, so I woke Bruce up to ask him what we should do. we decided to call her room and so we did. No answer. For a long time. By that time we were thinking she had died in the night and we went to the front desk to get someone to open the door. Well they had keys for the door sure enough but she had latched the thing and apparently they did NOT have a tool to unlatch it. I wanted them to break a window but they would not do this. We were all conferring outside her door listening to that alarm for a long time when suddenly Inez sauntered forth in a nightgown and a beanie wondering what all the fuss was about. But she was frail and we cut the trip off short as she fainted 3 times on us. I took her to the emergency room in St George but they didn't do much. We thought it might be altitude related and so she flew back to Florida a little sooner than expected.
 Inez loved to have fun and Bruce was really happy when one day she called and said she was going on a Bingo bus trip across several states. We were excited for her. But she fainted on that trip and her daughter had to drive several states to go get her out of the hospital. Back in Florida she was in the hospital again very soon. Bruce wen down when the situation started seeming pretty serious. Inez had move from her beloved Virginia to live right across the street from her daughter Yvonne, but although they each wished to be close it seemed impossible. In fact after I got there I think they were both glad they didn't need to interact as much. I knew neither of them wanted it to be that way, it just turned out always to be hurtful. Bruce was always his mom's favorite. He is 15 years younger than Yvonne and Inez always wanted a son. the difference in how she treated them was night and day. Butd  she is a masterful button pusher and Bruce an she would go round. he  would call me and tell me how frustrated he would get dealing with her and be very mad at himself for not being as patient as he thought he should be. He offered to stay in Florida with her. He really would have stayed for the rest of her life. I was really surprised and think it was the most unselfish thing she ever did when she told him to go home to me, to go back to work and take care of his family. I really thought she would want him to stay. ""Send LeAnn", she said, "She has a heart". It was very like Inez to say something like that.

So I flew to Florida. Inez was in the hospital again when I got there so I got to meet Yvonne and her husband Fred. I really liked them. I had no idea what i was doing. But Inez was definitely glad i was there and from the first day I could tell the nurses were too. She was a fairly imperious and stubborn person, but for some reason when i was there she was much more cooperative. the nurses started ordering meals for me so i would stay.

We had some really tender bonding moments and some incredibly bad ones where i wanted to fly home right that second. The nurses changed so often it did not seem like they even read her chart. She was supposed to take a pretty big handful of pills and she was supposed to do it with a nurse present. I asked the nurse if i could just monitor her because the problem an what eventually led to inez' death was that she was unable to swallow. Radiation for breast cancer and for a sinus cancer had ruined her ability to swallow. Eating was agonizing for her and she really liked to eat but it took a long time and she choked much if it back up. She was ending up in the hospital so often because she would aspirate the food into her lungs causing pneumonia.

I am getting a bit tired of writing now and did not mean this to be a full chronicle, but inez and I went through a lot together. One night, fresh out of the hospital, I thought she was in bed and woke up to sounds and found her scrubbing her immaculate laundry room in the middle of the night. I tried to get her to go to bed but she wouldn''t. I did and at about 2 a she came into my room angry as all get out an demanded to know whether i was just going to lay there in bed or whether i was going to help her. I told her it was the middle of the night and I was going to lay there in bed and so should she. (I WAS exhausted, there were a million stressful things to do every day and I was hoppin) The next morning she called me into her room and told me she wasn't feeling well- she asked for some pepto bismal and her inhaler and I brought both. She asked me if i would hold her and I did. It was such a naked moment. but I knew something was more wrong and so I called her health care nurse who advised me to call 911, which I did. Off tto the hospital again I decided to take a shower before I followed her thinking I would arrive very soon after and I did. But not before she threw a raging fit in the hospital and tried to refuse treatment. They told her she was having a heart attack and she would not believe them. When I got there she calmed down and let them begin to treat her but they Baker Acted her anyway and nne of us really wanted her to know that. It meant she had lost all rights to her own decisions and if there was anything that would be unbelieveable and terrible to Inez that was it. She was in and out of the hospital all the time. she hated being in. The doctors put her on oxygen and I would explain to her but unless I monitored her constantly in the night I'd find her with the canula off or she, attemoting to walk around would get all tangled up in the tubes and then distressed that she needed to be untangled. And she could have a terrible mean streak- One day I literally told her she was the nastiest woman I had ever met in my life and felt terrible for saying it but it felt true. Later she broke my heart when I told her one day that I was having bad menstrual cramps and felt terrible so that if I snapped at her I didn't mean to and she looked at me, her blue eyes as innocent as a baby's and said, that''s how i am too. There were the more amusing blowups, such as when I tool her to Walmart for shopping and medication on a pretty good day and she was riding on of those little carts and I said, "Inez! you need to watch out for people, you're going to hit someone" and like a totally willful child she said, "They need to watch out for meeeeeee!" In that same walmart she was opening bttles of pills, I know she was just trying to see if she could swallow them but I was telling her she couldn't just open the bottles and put them back and she tried to sneak away on that cart and do it anyway. People were walking up to me telling me I was a saint. I knew i damn sure wasn't. But we managed t get home and I managed to care for her and she managed not to eviscerate me. There was topless chili... she was trying to teach me how to make chili they way Bruce likes it (a painstaking process- he says he could taste the love, I believe him) and she was refusing to wear a top. (I notice that a lot of the end of life people I met in /Florida had an issue about wearing clothes) But she had health care appointments and refused to put on clothes so I told them we'd have to do it another time. It was always a balance of what she wanted and what she needed and I was constantly wondering if i was doing right by her. On day, she mapped out activities for me and got imperious as only Inez could and I fnally broke and said, "Inez, I am not your slave" "You're not good enough to be my slave she said, and oh my god, she meant just that!" that has become a family joke. Bruce says he would have said, "Ad what makes you think I have any desire to be your slave" but I was just fightin shock and anger in that moment. On the contrasting side Yvonne asked me one day if I'd like to go swimming with her and Inez said, she is here to take care of me, not to go swimming with you, she can't go swimming. I was stunned. It was pretty much a 24 hour a day job but I was shocked that she would say that. After yvonne left, Inez surprised me by apologizing immediately, and asking if i really wanted to go swimming. She said she just felt like she needed someone to be with her and she didn;t mean to speak to me like that. she really did need someone to be with her. there are so many memories of hot times and tender times I have.

What I was thinking about was that family is not so muc a matter of blood. t is a matter of need and nakedness and who finds a way to be there, no matter what, for the people they count as family.

I am really tired. Have only slept a tiny bit for the past three days. Yesterday (was it yesterday?) i was disgusted to find myself leaking tears and of course I wrote that on facebook because I write almost everything there. And to my surprise it had a response that was kind and compassionate, but it was from the person causing me to be sleepless. Now, being tired I should have been silent but was I? No. I basically alluded to hm being the reason for my sleeplessness which I did not explain and which of course when reading it sounds quite snippy which was not my intention but only to say it is dangerous territory (at least for me) and possibly destructive. I don;t BLAME him for my feelings, but if those feelings have not changed in all this time I really don;t see that they will and why come off sounding like a nut job. Worse is the recognition that I probably am a nut job if really only in regard to this situation. so...I am so tired, but I feel like I owe an apology or an explanation which puts me right in the position of talking about it that strikes me as quicksand. I think it may be kinder to seem rude and unappreciative of the overture which I am not, but better leave it seeming that way than try to explain what my POV is. Anyway, the bad feeling may keep me awake still. I don;t now but I sure hope not because I am getting erratic due to lack of sleep

All of my energy goes in one direction. I cannot for the life of me understand that or what to do about it, my usual response is to act like i ignore it, which is ridiculous but I do not see the value in doing anything else. It makes me feel like I am a marlin fighting on a hook for YEARS. I do not understand. i do not know what to do. What good is this?

one of those days.

I seem to be in a period of trying out new and different. And I am loving it! The poem I posted was from one part of one day on my first ever trip to Catalina (and Environmental Science lab, cracks me up) But omg it was fun. It was fun even though my creaky falling apart body couldn't DO everything. I did go kayaking, also for the first time! LOVED it! I have a date locally to go not-this-Sunday,-but-next with one friend and unscheduled plans to go with another friend.

Yesterday was another first. There is a performance component to my Poetry class and yesterday, for the first time in my memory I "performed" a poem. Outside. with people watching. And wind blowing and a very rude fountain that kept trying to swallow my words. With a microphone that I need some intimate time with if we are ever going to appear in public again, which we are. My classmates, wow, some of them are wonderful! I sucked but it was still sort of fun and I am looking forward to trying more new things.

Back to the ES trip (I slept on the Queen Mary! I also accidentally groped my roommate in the middle of the night because I navigated in the dark to the wrong bed but even that was funny) I saw dolphins and sea lions and garibaldi and bald eagles and a red tail hawk. I touched sharks and rays and all manner of invertebrates!

Did you know that there are laser pointers so powerful they will pinpoint stars in the sky and can possibly disrupt overflying aircraft?

I also found new music, Flight of the Concords which made me smile.

Night Boat

Old pier wood creaked and groaned as we amble-danced in the yellow  circles cast by our flashlights- pale reflection of the glittering, pure-bright  scintillations gleaming above in softened obsidian sky. The chug-purring launch bounced softly in the current. We streamed in  took a seat along the sides.  In quickened laugh-talk,  anticipatory, we jabbered our way into open water. Lanterns illumed the sea on either side of our craft, luring a lambent chum of glowing plankton,  drawn like watery moths-  A silver shape sliced an angle across the water! Then more,  schools of silvery squid slashing the borders of light, quick sentient missiles. “Shhh,” Preston, our leader, shhh’d us “I heard a sea lion over there” As she said it, I heard the sharp blow of expelled breath. Subdued, we waited. “Look! …There!” Something gray broke the water Then rocketing, rolling  toward us, unbelievably fast snatched a squid and sped into the dark. It must have dove deep, the other side of the boat never saw it.

I got a good, close look- the barreling body rolling joyously in the hunt It came again! Then again! We were all standing, straining to see. Reluctantly, I yielded my place to a person  from the other side and then, suddenly, there were three! They streaked beneath us repeatedly till the captain finally doused the light and steered us pier side. And, after- After the lab where we squinted over fresh plankton slides watching microscopic monsters devour each other, I thought of those playful, happy sea lion faces, how they moved so freely, orienting themselves Independent of gravity it seemed. How they live without pockets  or oppressive politics. I was glad I got to see them Before Fukushima radiation spread across the sea- Our unreturnable gift to them.